Grassroots Leadership In The News

"Obviously, it's very good news from our perspective," said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, a group that monitors civil rights abuses at the detention centers. "It's obvious that the rationale for detaining all of these people was clearly not justified in the first place if they're now able to release them." Read more about Hundreds of low-risk detainees released from immigration detention

On the one hand, a pathway to citizenship and legal reforms sought by advocates could reduce the number of immigrants detained by CCA and its competitors in the private prison industry. “Private prison corporations have an enormous stake in immigration reform,” says Bob Libal, a prison reform advocate with Grassroots Leadership. “A reform that provides a timely pathway to citizenship without further criminalizing migration would be a huge hit to the industry,” he says. Read more about How Private Prisons Game the Immigration System

Two national groups that signed onto the letter, Grassroots Leadership and The Sentencing Project, released a brief report this morning further detailing the reasons for closure. [...] To underline the points highlighted in the report, Grassroots Leadership will host a vigil outside Dawson on March 7 to call for its closure.

“It’s startling to see a stadium will be named after them,” Libal said. “It’s like calling something Blackwater Stadium. This is a company whose record is marred by human rights abuses, by lawsuits, by unnecessary deaths of people in their custody and a whole series of incidents that really draw into question their ability to successfully manage a prison facility.” Read more about A Company That Runs Prisons Will Have Its Name on a Stadium

Bob Libal, of Grassroots Leadership, which issued a major report on Operation Streamline’s migrant-to-prison pipeline last year, commented on Operation Streamline and related programs, “These are programs where immigrants lose years of their lives and taxpayers lose billions of dollars, but the private prison corporations are counting on these programs to make profits to pay their executives exorbitant salaries and reinvest their money in lobbying efforts.”
He notes that the problem of decoupling immigration reform from enforcement is a political—and economic—one. “There is no legal reason why we can’t fix our immigration system and legalize people who are here without increasing border militarization and criminal penalties.” Read more about With Immigration Reform Looming, Private Prisons Lobby to Keep Migrants Behind Bars

Grassroots Leadership, a national social justice organization, is one of the groups that signed the letter sent to lawmakers.
Executive director Bob Libal says the coalition is asking to close the jail now to save state money and possibly save lives.
“It has become abundantly clear this facility is unsafe for the people who are incarcerated in the facility and there is a growing momentum around the state and the country to close this facility.” Read more about Human Rights Groups Call For Closure Of Dawson State Jail

“The place was dismal,” said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, an organization working to end the private prison industry. “These men are eating, sleeping, living, and going to the bathroom in the same room … with a maximum of one to three hours in a small indoor overcrowded recreation room as their only break.
“The men we talked with said it was the worst detention center they’d ever been in. Polk has no classes, no contact visits, poor food, no privacy, and no legal services,” Libal said. “There is absolutely nothing to do but wait.” Read more about Concrete Limbo: Two Texas immigration jails are rated among the worst in the country.

“Our immigration detention system is in crisis,” Andrea Black, executive director of the network, said at a press conference organized by advocacy group Grassroots Leadership in Austin. Black said the reports detail inadequate medical care and nutrition and inmates being confined in crowded cells for up to 23 hours a day. Read more about Immigrant Detention Facilities Inhumane, Study Claims

At Polk County, 280 people signed up to speak to a team led by Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership in Austin. The group spoke to 60. Alleged problems included work programs paying $1 an hour, expensive phone calls that provided few minutes, and the use of solitary confinement and the signing of an English-only document agreeing to it by a man who couldn’t understand the document.
“It is really at a point that ICE can’t maintain a system so large and have it truly be a civil system,” Libal said. Read more about Reform needed in immigrant detentions, report says